On December 10, 2018, smartphone chipmaker Qualcomm Inc. announced that it won a preliminary injunction from the Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court in China banning the sale of iPhone models 6s through X in China. The patent infringement case began in October 2017, when Qualcomm alleged Apple Inc. infringed two software patents related to “resizing photographs and managing apps on a touch screen.”

On December 4, 2018, 12 state attorneys general filed the first multi-state civil lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana against Medical Informatics Engineering Inc. (MIE) for violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). The case involves a 2015 data breach of MIE’s WebChart electronic medical records (EMR) databases that compromised personal health information (PHI) of over 3.9 million patients.

On November 21, 2018, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that employees and former employees of the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center (UPMC) can pursue claims of negligence against UPMC. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reinstated the case, previously dismissed by two lower courts, upon agreeing with the plaintiffs that UPMC had a duty to exercise reasonable care to protect employee data stored on its computer systems.